If you follow us on Facebook or Instagram you’ll have seen that we have a new addition to the family, a cute wee lamb! We were so excited to see that our youngest ewe Charlie had given birth. We thought she was pregnant ages ago and then changed our mind so this came as a bit of a surprise. It became apparent that Charlie’s pregnancy was a bit of a struggle as her lamb looked particularly small but they both seemed to be doing ok.
Unfortunately, by Saturday morning we realised that something wasn’t quite right. After initially feeding on Charlie, lambie wasn’t anymore and she was weakening fast. After a quick drive down to the farming store, we bought a tub of colostrum and a bottle, got some brief instructions from the guy on the counter, and rushed back home.
Bottle feeding went well and lambie made it through the next night and was a lot stronger. Grant was able to catch Charlie and put her on her back, clear her nipples of whatever was blocking them (Grant has really enjoyed all this – wait for later!) and get the lamb to start feeding again on her own – success!! Luckily Charlie didn’t reject her lamb after us handling her and throughout the day they happily bonded … all was going well.
We thought we were in the clear; no need to bring the lamb inside and hand rear her (Grant looked VERY happy about this.) she was going to be fine in the paddock. Then on Tuesday we went to check on lambie and she had a huge lump coming out under her skin by her tail and couldn’t walk properly.
Grant donned some rubber gloves, gently picked up lambie to see what was wrong, there was an obstruction and big lumps of very hard colostrum poo had to be removed, (yes, Grant is ecstatic by this stage).  He removed all he could and tried to clean poor lambie up, however there was still a problem. Her tail and bum were glued together with colostrum.
After cleaning himself up, Grant googled and found some info on what it could be, he found an informative and amusing post on Gummy Bum.  In lambie’s case it was clear that we couldn’t sort out the issue at home, so off to the local vet went, luckily they fit us in and the vet that was on had experience with larger animals.
 
Fortunately he was able to clear the blockage and remove all the colostrum that was stuck, he was concerned that her tail wasn’t working which could have caused the problem that then impacted her legs, fingers crossed she was going to be alright.
 
Back home we put lambie in with her Mum, she perked up and within the hour had fed with her tail waggling and was walking around, phew!  We are keeping a very close eye on her to make sure she can pass number two’s and the blockage doesn’t happen again.
It’s still touch and go. Please put wee lambie in your prayers as we pray for her full recovery.
Triona & Grant.

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